Many financial institutions have developed internet banking software applications for their customers. These software applications offer convenient ways for customers to perform increasingly complex banking transactions remotely, thereby lowering costs to financial institutions by reducing customer load on their brick and mortar banking facilities. Some internet banking software applications allow customers to remotely request the financial institution to prepare and issue payments from customer accounts to identified merchants. The financial institutions implement the payments to the merchants by sending a paper check, sending an electronic payment, or the like. When possible, the financial institutions prefer to make payments electronically due to the low cost compared to paper checks. However, for personal payments or payments to less established merchants, the financial institutions implement the payments via paper checks.
Generally, customers prepare payment requests by unilaterally entering payment request information, including merchant information and the customer's account number with that merchant, into a financial institution's software application. If a customer enters inaccurate merchant and/or account number information, and/or the software application does not recognize an established merchant from the customer's entered information, paper checks are issued by default.
Customers can also send merchant information and account number information to create a payee in a financial institution's software application. Creating a payee will subsequently allow the financial institution's software application to enable features such as e-bills and automatic payments with the created payee. However, if the customer enters inaccurate merchant and/or account number information while creating payees, and/or the software application does not recognize an established merchant from the customer's entered information, subsequent automatic payments and payments to e-bills will be made via paper checks by default. As such, the entry of correct merchant information and account number information is also important in the payee creation process.